Unremarkable.
Tonight I've been reminded of a feeling that I used to have when I was younger, one of the nuances of my worthlessness complex. It would occur whenever someone I became unreasonably attached to chose someone else to be with, instead of me; it was one of the things I felt when Erica told me she was pregnant, and I realized she hadn't chosen me, she'd chosen someone else instead. It's a sense that I must be completely unremarkable somehow, utterly nondescript, easily overlooked, and even more easily passed over. Why the fuck would you think they would choose you? the demon in my head would whisper to me, giggling a little in my ear. You're totally unremarkable. You're not worth it.
With Richard, it was Kristy. I met them both when I was thirteen and we all started high school together. It will always be hard for me to perfectly define exactly what it was that drew me to Richard, though I have formed bits and pieces of a theory. I know that I wanted him to notice me, because he refused to notice anyone or anything other than himself and what he wanted to do. He didn't give a fuck about the opinions of the people around him (or so it seemed), which I longed to be able to do. He was manipulative and clever in all the wrong ways, and I found myself wanting to best him somehow, wanting to prove that I was his match. He wanted to hurt people, and I made it very, very easy for him to hurt me. In retrospect, of course it went the way it ended up going; I gave him every opportunity to slaughter me that I could.
To Richard, I was good for one thing: sexual gratification. He was very good at feeding me just enough attention and just enough sweetness in the vast sea of cynicism and animosity that was his usual demeanor that it was enough to make me think I was special. We all want to feel special, to someone. I am ashamed at this point in my life to think that at another point in this same life, he was the one I thought I needed to feel special to. Though I try to avoid doing so as much as possible, thinking of Richard makes me want to yell at my younger self, "What the fuck are you doing?" I try not to judge my younger self; he was a few years older than me, and at thirteen aren't you really more a kid than anything else, even fourteen? It's hard to let myself off the hook; I know how smart I was, in some things. I wish I had been as smart in others.
Our first sexual encounter was in the back seat of the school van, while we were being driven home from a field trip. In the silence and privacy of our own row, we slowly groped at each other, hands slipping under shirts and down pants. I held my breath the whole time. Not a syllable had been exchanged between us, and not a syllable would be. We pulled apart from each other a few minutes before we arrived back at our school, and made our way out of the van to stand with everyone else in front of the building. I stood next to Richard and looked at him, thinking he would say something, but he didn't look at me, and walked away to talk to someone else. I watched him go and felt confused. My self-esteem was so fucked up at that age that I decided that it was all normal and fine, why would it need to be a big deal if he didn't want it to be a big deal? So I decided it wasn't a big deal, like he wanted.
Every few weeks or months Richard would decide that I was worth a moment of his time, and I would acquiesce. He would cycle through the various girls around him, and it never seemed clear when he would abandon one of us for the next, or decide to try anyone again. Kristy was one of the other girls he would always pull back to him. When Kristy, in turn, started fooling around with other boys, Richard would focus his energy on me again. And it quite literally hurts in my heart to remember that I would just fucking let him.
Richard almost succeeded in taking my virginity, a few months after my fifteenth birthday. We were driving together, one day after school. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt, and I was. The very fact that he seemed to care so little made me care so much more. He pulled into the parking lot of a church, completely barren of any other cars or life of any sort. He turned the car off, fired up a cigarette, and waited.
At first I didn’t know what he was waiting for. I sat, nervously playing with my fingers in my lap, watching him, not knowing what to say, and feeling more and more as the moments passed that he didn’t want me to say anything anyway - his monosyllabic and sometimes nonexistent answers to my entreaties told me all I needed to know; this wasn't going to be about talking. So I leaned over, and started kissing him.
It was the epitome of youthful, adolescent lust. Our kissing and groping was set at a fever pitch, as if everything had to move faster for it to really be happening. The moments when it slowed down were terrifying. When our lips broke apart, so he could focus on pulling my pants down, was the most terrifying. His pants had been pulled down several minutes before.
He pulled me on top of him, and started pressing my hips down with one hand as he used his other to help navigate. All it would have taken would be for me to let my knees go, to let the full weight of my body rest on him. That would have been enough to force our maneuvers into working. But somewhere in my mind, administrative duties were still being performed. I coldly, calmly, and rationally went through a mental monologue of the event as it unfolded, live, in front of me. And I realized in my detachment, that this event could potentially lead to a mess. It was, after all, my first time.
His hands were on my hips, trying to pull me down on him, when I gasped into his ear, “I might bleed a little.” Still somewhat divorced mentally from the whole event, I remember thinking that it was a kindness to let him know. No one wants such a thing to be a surprise, surely. His hands left my sides and he became extraordinarily still extraordinarily quickly. “I don’t think we should do this.” Dumbfounded, I pulled away and sat on the passenger seat. “Why?”
He never answered me, though I dared to ask again. He started doing up his pants, and I did the same. The car started, and rolled forward, heading back toward the street. He drove me to my parent’s house and I got out, hoping at every moment he’d say something or look at me, but he did neither. I don't know why I expected it to ever be different, to ever think that the next time would feel worth it. I don't know why I kept expecting him to look at me, when he never did; not after he'd gotten what he wanted.
Kristy always had dark rims around her eyes. It looked like she never slept, or that someone was perpetually hitting her in the face so it looked like her natural skin tone. She never wore makeup, or ever really seemed to brush her hair. Her clothes all had stains that never seemed to go away. She was generally disgusting to me, but she never really looked as disgusting as she did the day after Richard and I didn't have sex. No one could look so disgusting as her, with his tongue jammed down her throat and her hand jammed down his pants. All the brushes and makeup in the world couldn’t have made her look anything like decent.
They were wedged between the water fountain and the wall outside my geometry class. I had to pass them to get to the door. I was able to exercise extraordinary control over my eyes. There was none of that inability to look away, like there is in movies depicting stories of great romances and the betrayals that inevitably follow. I let nothing more than a glance get in. But that one glance was enough to last me the next five years. Her fingers were wound through his hair on the back of his head. His hand was leaning against the wall as he pressed Kristy against it.
I made it through the entirety of geometry unblinking. I answered questions correctly when I was called upon by the teacher. Those that sat near me didn’t say much. One person did ask if I was all right, but all it took was a smile and an “of course” for them to turn away again. After that class was lunch. I didn’t head downstairs to the cafeteria with everyone else. Instead, I wandered into the single-person bathroom next to the teacher’s lounge, locked the door, and slammed my fist into the brick wall. I don’t think that I was really angry. I just wanted an excuse for the tears that no one would have to ask about; it would only take a glance for them to know why I was hurting.
I will never stop being grateful for the fact that Richard was not the first person I had sex with. That is the only thing I will ever thank Richard for; the rest I will hate him for. He was certainly one of the men in my life that had the unfortunate ability to find my weaknesses, quite expeditiously. He was more dangerous than the others, though, because he wanted to find my weaknesses so he could sink his teeth into them. Controlling me helped him feel better, and I let him because I thought it would make me feel better, too. When he'd focus his attention on me, I would feel special again, and I could convince myself it was all worth it. But he'd always look away again, to leave me with the conviction that it must be because I was just that fucking unremarkable, and just that fucking worthless.
With Richard, it was Kristy. I met them both when I was thirteen and we all started high school together. It will always be hard for me to perfectly define exactly what it was that drew me to Richard, though I have formed bits and pieces of a theory. I know that I wanted him to notice me, because he refused to notice anyone or anything other than himself and what he wanted to do. He didn't give a fuck about the opinions of the people around him (or so it seemed), which I longed to be able to do. He was manipulative and clever in all the wrong ways, and I found myself wanting to best him somehow, wanting to prove that I was his match. He wanted to hurt people, and I made it very, very easy for him to hurt me. In retrospect, of course it went the way it ended up going; I gave him every opportunity to slaughter me that I could.
To Richard, I was good for one thing: sexual gratification. He was very good at feeding me just enough attention and just enough sweetness in the vast sea of cynicism and animosity that was his usual demeanor that it was enough to make me think I was special. We all want to feel special, to someone. I am ashamed at this point in my life to think that at another point in this same life, he was the one I thought I needed to feel special to. Though I try to avoid doing so as much as possible, thinking of Richard makes me want to yell at my younger self, "What the fuck are you doing?" I try not to judge my younger self; he was a few years older than me, and at thirteen aren't you really more a kid than anything else, even fourteen? It's hard to let myself off the hook; I know how smart I was, in some things. I wish I had been as smart in others.
Our first sexual encounter was in the back seat of the school van, while we were being driven home from a field trip. In the silence and privacy of our own row, we slowly groped at each other, hands slipping under shirts and down pants. I held my breath the whole time. Not a syllable had been exchanged between us, and not a syllable would be. We pulled apart from each other a few minutes before we arrived back at our school, and made our way out of the van to stand with everyone else in front of the building. I stood next to Richard and looked at him, thinking he would say something, but he didn't look at me, and walked away to talk to someone else. I watched him go and felt confused. My self-esteem was so fucked up at that age that I decided that it was all normal and fine, why would it need to be a big deal if he didn't want it to be a big deal? So I decided it wasn't a big deal, like he wanted.
Every few weeks or months Richard would decide that I was worth a moment of his time, and I would acquiesce. He would cycle through the various girls around him, and it never seemed clear when he would abandon one of us for the next, or decide to try anyone again. Kristy was one of the other girls he would always pull back to him. When Kristy, in turn, started fooling around with other boys, Richard would focus his energy on me again. And it quite literally hurts in my heart to remember that I would just fucking let him.
Richard almost succeeded in taking my virginity, a few months after my fifteenth birthday. We were driving together, one day after school. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt, and I was. The very fact that he seemed to care so little made me care so much more. He pulled into the parking lot of a church, completely barren of any other cars or life of any sort. He turned the car off, fired up a cigarette, and waited.
At first I didn’t know what he was waiting for. I sat, nervously playing with my fingers in my lap, watching him, not knowing what to say, and feeling more and more as the moments passed that he didn’t want me to say anything anyway - his monosyllabic and sometimes nonexistent answers to my entreaties told me all I needed to know; this wasn't going to be about talking. So I leaned over, and started kissing him.
It was the epitome of youthful, adolescent lust. Our kissing and groping was set at a fever pitch, as if everything had to move faster for it to really be happening. The moments when it slowed down were terrifying. When our lips broke apart, so he could focus on pulling my pants down, was the most terrifying. His pants had been pulled down several minutes before.
He pulled me on top of him, and started pressing my hips down with one hand as he used his other to help navigate. All it would have taken would be for me to let my knees go, to let the full weight of my body rest on him. That would have been enough to force our maneuvers into working. But somewhere in my mind, administrative duties were still being performed. I coldly, calmly, and rationally went through a mental monologue of the event as it unfolded, live, in front of me. And I realized in my detachment, that this event could potentially lead to a mess. It was, after all, my first time.
His hands were on my hips, trying to pull me down on him, when I gasped into his ear, “I might bleed a little.” Still somewhat divorced mentally from the whole event, I remember thinking that it was a kindness to let him know. No one wants such a thing to be a surprise, surely. His hands left my sides and he became extraordinarily still extraordinarily quickly. “I don’t think we should do this.” Dumbfounded, I pulled away and sat on the passenger seat. “Why?”
He never answered me, though I dared to ask again. He started doing up his pants, and I did the same. The car started, and rolled forward, heading back toward the street. He drove me to my parent’s house and I got out, hoping at every moment he’d say something or look at me, but he did neither. I don't know why I expected it to ever be different, to ever think that the next time would feel worth it. I don't know why I kept expecting him to look at me, when he never did; not after he'd gotten what he wanted.
Kristy always had dark rims around her eyes. It looked like she never slept, or that someone was perpetually hitting her in the face so it looked like her natural skin tone. She never wore makeup, or ever really seemed to brush her hair. Her clothes all had stains that never seemed to go away. She was generally disgusting to me, but she never really looked as disgusting as she did the day after Richard and I didn't have sex. No one could look so disgusting as her, with his tongue jammed down her throat and her hand jammed down his pants. All the brushes and makeup in the world couldn’t have made her look anything like decent.
They were wedged between the water fountain and the wall outside my geometry class. I had to pass them to get to the door. I was able to exercise extraordinary control over my eyes. There was none of that inability to look away, like there is in movies depicting stories of great romances and the betrayals that inevitably follow. I let nothing more than a glance get in. But that one glance was enough to last me the next five years. Her fingers were wound through his hair on the back of his head. His hand was leaning against the wall as he pressed Kristy against it.
I made it through the entirety of geometry unblinking. I answered questions correctly when I was called upon by the teacher. Those that sat near me didn’t say much. One person did ask if I was all right, but all it took was a smile and an “of course” for them to turn away again. After that class was lunch. I didn’t head downstairs to the cafeteria with everyone else. Instead, I wandered into the single-person bathroom next to the teacher’s lounge, locked the door, and slammed my fist into the brick wall. I don’t think that I was really angry. I just wanted an excuse for the tears that no one would have to ask about; it would only take a glance for them to know why I was hurting.
I will never stop being grateful for the fact that Richard was not the first person I had sex with. That is the only thing I will ever thank Richard for; the rest I will hate him for. He was certainly one of the men in my life that had the unfortunate ability to find my weaknesses, quite expeditiously. He was more dangerous than the others, though, because he wanted to find my weaknesses so he could sink his teeth into them. Controlling me helped him feel better, and I let him because I thought it would make me feel better, too. When he'd focus his attention on me, I would feel special again, and I could convince myself it was all worth it. But he'd always look away again, to leave me with the conviction that it must be because I was just that fucking unremarkable, and just that fucking worthless.